


Brother's Blood

by eccentrics (orphan_account)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Gen, Post-Sburb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-27
Updated: 2011-05-27
Packaged: 2017-10-19 19:57:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/204651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/eccentrics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's christmas morning and Dave remembers too much, even if he doesn't realize it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brother's Blood

Dave Strider is not a person that grieves.

He is not one that lingers on the past; he isn’t even a person that necessarily forgives and not someone who necessarily remembers.  Dave Strider is just a kid, back then he was just a kid, now he is just a kid and soon he won’t be.  He never thinks about his dead brother-- ( _oh_ , but in some off shoot timeline it’s just Dave Strider going back into time to--)

(Nah, not even in a _doomed_ timeline would Strider ever let himself indulge in the dead.)

\--yeah, he never thinks about his dead brother.

Life goes on after the game, nobody is reunited, everyone leaves each other but Dave still has three best friends that he knows would give their lives for him and well that’s fucking romantic as shit, but it’s the only honest thing left in his life.

It snows in Houston; for the first time in years, it’s only an inch of snow, he’s always hated this damn city.

\---

Dave Strider is not a fighter.

But he kicks the can across the street anyway, even though everything is done, what’s done is done and there’s nothing any of them can do about it.  Those four kids, well they all did a good thing didn’t they?  It’s still bizarre, he has feelings of feeling like he should fight or blame someone, but Dave Strider is ultimately not a fighter.

In a sense, he was raised to be one.  Bro fought with him on that roof top as many times as neither of them wanted, but he’s not a fighter.  He’s not necessarily a lover either; he’s not necessarily anything, that’s the only art he’s been trained in.

He’s been trained to adapt, he’s been trained to always keep his cool (and really, it’s not like he has anything to slip underneath the “cool kid persona”), he’s been trained to always be what he needs to be.

Strider, you were trained to be the best fucking kid you could ever be.

And yet he’s failing.

\---

“Dave!”

He looks up and sees John suddenly only a few feet away from him, he grins as if he wasn’t worried about him, as if he was just excited to see the inch of snow that’s fallen over the city.  “I was looking for you!  It’s really cold isn’t it?  It hasn’t snowed here in awhile; I always ask if there’s snow on your Christmases but now that there _is_ , I’m pretty sure it will be the best Christmas in the world.”

“I’m sorry to break it to you, but it stopped being the best Christmas when Jade and Rose got drunk on eggnog, I mean I knew Jade has it in her to try jumping off a roof and dancing but Rose should know better about those crazy wizard powers of hers.”

John giggles just a little, “Hey they’re both okay right?  So this is just something you’re going to tell all your little cool Strider babies one day.”

“I’ll have the coolest babies, I’ll give them a pair of shades and when I carry them around…” His voice trails off and he motions towards John, “Look!  There’s the guy who is in love with Nic Cage, like seriously he’s _in love_ with him, he cried at the end of Kick Ass and everything.”

“Dave I don’t appreciate you telling your babies that I cried at the end of Kick Ass.”  John laughs at anyway, because he always laughs at the things that Dave would tell him.

“Alright Egbert, alright…” When Dave’s voice trails off, John stops laughing and just stares up at him, _waiting_ as if he knew. 

“I bet I was a cool baby, right?”

“The coolest.”

It’s quiet afterwards.

\---

“Do you have dreams about him and stuff?”

“Nah Egbert, nothing cryptic like that.  That’s freaky stuff right there, besides what’s there to dream about?  I had my time with him, you know?”  Dave leans back against the apartment building; he’s staring straight ahead and hears John shoot off questions just a bit more.  Really, only he would wear sunglasses at 3am, because the world always needs to be a bit dimmer than most people realize.  Houston’s usually a hot place, a sunny place sometimes but it’s 3am, winter and snowing and everything is still too uncomfortable and bright.

(LOHAC was bright, he remembers that and he would want to bring it up from time to time, but he never did.

Heat was never his thing, he wonders if clock work was either.)

“You don’t have a grave for your brother, do you?”

“And I don’t want one, thanks for playing though.”  John sighs, Dave keeps looking straight ahead as if the longer they stay out here the less disgusting, dirty, horrible the air would smell but it just gets worse.

It always does.

\---

“Maybe we can get coffee.”

“It’s Christmas and 3 in the morning, nobody is working.”

“Oh.”

Yet there are cars still in the streets, enough where they both have to look both ways and walk pretty fast on the streets.  They have been walking for hours now; they might need to get on a bus to get back to the apartment on Christmas morning.

 He would stop in the street, just for a second, maybe only half and John would still be behind so it wasn’t a big deal.  He didn’t imagine his hands stained with Bro’s blood, he doesn’t even think of the memory in the back of his mind that holds Bro’s dead body and sword and everything else, he just remembers he’s raised to be better than this.

He doesn’t have these delusions that everyone in the world is Bro, he doesn’t have these thoughts of him very often, he’s not even thinking of the _first_ Christmas he’s ever had with him or something like that.

Dave Strider doesn’t know what he’s thinking about in those split seconds, but it’s enough to get him out of the cool kid persona when they’re looking for a bus.

 ---

He punches the guy in the face for no reason.

Actually, he was probably some homeless dude trying to steal change from John’s pants, but still he feels like he broke the guy’s nose for no reason.

After he punches the guy in the face, he swore he’s looking at John through his shades and maybe there’s some faint cry of help there, something maybe saying _help_ but Dave Strider doesn’t remember, doesn’t need help, he’s the best kid he can be.

Even if he is failing, even if everything is too bright, even if sometimes he feels like he can’t breathe, even if he has no memories of anything at all—

“You’re not okay so don’t say you are, once we get home we are having a bro hug that will defy all the bro hugs.”

He’s just a kid and he doesn’t know anymore, he doesn’t know about why his hands curl into fists for a second (maybe longer), he doesn’t know why he suddenly loses it at 3 in the morning with Egbert around and a homeless dude in a far off corner wondering why some cool kid broke his nose, really.

“John, all you had to say was that you loved me and we could ditch this place, ride on the back of some homeless dude’s cardboard box and write JUST MARRIED in the snow.”

This time John doesn’t laugh, only because Dave Strider looks like he’s about to cry.

 


End file.
